Fort Bend fiddler enjoys familiar 'Saloon Songs'

Alisa Pederson is the featured fiddle player in "Saloon Songs" staged at Music Box Theater through June 6.

Alisa Pederson is the featured fiddle player in "Saloon Songs" staged at Music Box Theater through June 6.

Photo: Music Box Theater

Photo: Music Box Theater

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Alisa Pederson is the featured fiddle player in "Saloon Songs" staged at Music Box Theater through June 6.

Alisa Pederson is the featured fiddle player in "Saloon Songs" staged at Music Box Theater through June 6.

Photo: Music Box Theater

Fort Bend fiddler enjoys familiar 'Saloon Songs'

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The music group Alabama sang, "If you're gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band."

So when Music Box Theater in Houston performed the cabaret act "Saloon Songs" in 2013, it added fiddle-player Alisa Pederson of Meadows Place to its usual house band of four musicians on keyboard, lead guitar, bass and percussion.

"Saloon Songs" is back, for seven shows through June 6, and Pederson is in the spotlight again.

"It is beyond fabulous to work at Music Box," said Pederson. "They allow you freedom to be creative; they don't fence you in."

The show's theme is country-western, folk and bluegrass music, explained owner Brad Scarborough of Missouri City. The former Richmond resident and his wife, Rebekah Dahl, have produced about four cabaret shows per year since opening the theater at 2623 Colquitt in Houston four years ago.

"Saloon Songs" is a limited-engagement reprise of a song list that Pederson fiddled for in 2013.

"My favorite number in the show," she said, "is probably 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' with Luke Wrobel. We interact and work so well together.

"I also played with them in their 'Year in Review' show in January 2014 and I got to interact musically with Luke as Tevye doing 'If I Were a Rich Man' from 'Fiddler on the Roof.'

"Of course, I love doing 'Desperado' with the band," said Pederson, explaining that Music Box Theater's regular musicians include drummer Donald Payne of Rosenberg, lead guitarist Mark McCain, bass player Long Le and keyboardist Glenn Sharp, who is each show's musical director.

She married Vaughan Pederson, a trumpet player, 31 years ago. The couple lives in Meadows Place.

Alisa Pederson was the orchestra director at Morton Ranch High School in Katy from 2010-13. She currently runs Encore Strings, which books performers at various social events and activities.

About 15 years ago, she "reconnected at a gig" with Sharp.

"It was a wedding," she explained. "We were hired separately. I said, 'Oh my goodness, it's you.' We were so happy to see each other, and we began to play here and there together."

Sharp said Pederson is a perfect fit for fiddling in the "Saloon Songs" show.

"Growing up in Texas," she said, "the country genre is very natural to me. "The fiddle is a style of violin; it's a genre."

Pederson has also performed with casts of several productions of the Broadway musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," and she played violin for "The Robber Bridegroom" when Fort Bend Theatre produced the show at the Stafford Centre.

"I have played some country-band kinds of things, but those aren't generally my favorite," she said. "You don't play long enough with them to get tight; it's usually one night at a time."

A longer run, such as the opportunity to play in a cabaret at Music Box Theater, "is a musician's dream," said Pederson. "It's a musical family. I love playing there."

After "Saloon Songs," Pederson will play two weekends, June 12-20, when Music Box presents a follow-up to last summer's "The Brad and Luke Show," in which Scarborough and Wrobel will perform without female cast members Dahl, Kaitlin Sullivan and Cay Taylor.